Avatar: Seven Havens is a brilliant take-down of Korra's biggest haters

Revenge is a dish best served 12 years later

The Korra series finale — as later seen in high-definition under normal connection speeds — is still one of my favorite endings (and favorite TV shows) of all time. But it’s hard to ignore the flaws; from a slashed budget that forced the animators to rely on still images for some pivotal scenes instead of fluid animation, to a planned kiss between Korra and Asami that studio executives rejected in favor of some charged hand-holding, the finale leaves a lot to be desired. A small but vocal contingent of fans who rejected the premise of a rebellious young female Avatar as a replacement for the lovable and exuberant boy wunderkind Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender cast a dark cloud over the whole enterprise. Even for Korra's biggest fans, the overall experience of Korra was an imperfect one.

Now, over a decade (and one very subpar live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake) later, the original franchise is back. The first three episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens are streaming now on Paramount Plus, which thankfully has better tech than mid-2010s Nick.com. There's a lot to love about Seven Havens, from the stunning animation by French studio La Chouette Compagnie to returning franchise creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's masterful worldbuilding to an intriguing new mystery box at the center of the story. But what I love most about Seven Havens is that it is a brilliant rebuttal of every single angry Avatar fan and meddling studio executive who ever tried to tear down The Legend of Korra. Take that, haters!

One step forward, two steps back

Seven Havens takes place over 200 years after Legend of Korra. A mysterious calamity has undone the industrial revolution that escalated across the previous two shows. Instead of the gleaming, utopian Republic City in Korra, or even the sprawling, walled kingdom of Ba Sing Se in The Last Airbender, there are seven fortified "havens" spread across this world, with seemingly nothing but inhospitable desert in between. Some time after the Four Nations invented hoverbikes, everything collapsed.

A modern world capped at the knees by nature isn’t a surprising scenario when you consider, uh, the present day in our real world. What is surprising, though, is that according to everyone in the world of Seven Havens, the fall of civilization is entirely Korra's fault.

Right from the opening credits, it's established that Korra caused some sort of apocalyptic event. Not only did this make way for a post-apocalyptic future, it also transformed the public's perception of the Avatar from humanity's savior into its destroyer. In the world of Seven Havens, Korra has become a sort of boogeyman. Murals painted on buildings depict her as a monstrous elemental force, while actors perform plays about the evil Avatar that doomed civilization.

This all makes for a clever premise in which two new Avatars (a pair of identical twins named Nisha and Pavi) have to hide their powers from society and train in secret. But on a deeper level, DiMartino, Konietzko, and the team of new writers are seemingly responding to the Korra haters among the Avatar fandom. By painting Korra as a monster, when we all know she was actually a heroic if somewhat flawed figure, Seven Havens turns all the criticism of that show into something blatantly absurd.

It also seems fairly obvious from the get go that Korra didn't actually cause the calamity that doomed civilization (at least not intentionally). Not everyone in the post-apocalyptic universe fears the Avatars. Meanwhile, trailers for Seven Havens have hinted that we may see more of Korra in the show, and I assume we'll eventually find out exactly what happened. When that big reveal finally arrives, I'm pretty confident it will be a lot more nuanced than “Korra was evil the whole time.” The series is already paving the way for a deadly blow against anyone who couldn’t handle a complex hero’s heated emotions.

Vindication for Korra

In some ways, Seven Havens actually reminds me more of The Last Airbender than The Legend of Korra. Centering the story on a child-aged Avatar again instead of a teenager gives the series a youthful exuberance that feels much less serious than Korra's story did. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean the new show feels a lot less mature than Korra — at least for now.

Like The Last Airbender, I have a feeling that Seven Havens will very quickly start to feel a lot less childish once the stakes ratchet up. When that happens, we may finally get the best of both worlds: a story with the unbridled energy of The Last Airbender and the maturity of The Legend of Korra. I just hope this time, everyone else gets out of the way so DiMartino and Konietzko can nail the ending.